A Pharmacist's Journey To IIM Kozhikode | Mukul Vashishtha

It was a chilly November morning and I reached the test center an hour before the reporting time. I was nervous and confident at the same time. “It is destined to be my day for I have put efforts in preparation, done well in mocks and was ready to move one step closer to a good B-School”- I told myself. But as luck would have it, all the nightmares came true- CAT 18 was a quant heavy paper set up by IIM C and was apt to shatter my dreams of making it to an IIM that year. My memory of those 3 hours is hazy but I did reasonably well in VARC & DILR, thoroughly screwed up QA and somehow managed to land up with a below par percentile.

With an uncleared quant sectional cutoff and zero IIM calls I decided to skip the WAT-PI process of all other B-schools that I had applied to. I decided to even skip the WAT-PI preparation altogether.

Journey to Second CAT attempt (2019):

I knew it in my mind that CAT 19 would be my final attempt and I will have to make the most out of it. I began preparation again in full swing but this time with a demanding full-time job. I got wonderful opportunities at the company, met big shots of the healthcare industry, including many Padma Shri’s and started to enjoy what I was doing. However, in the process, I couldn’t get enough time and CAT prep took a back seat.

Around September end I finally decided to pull up my socks and started solving previous year test series of various mock providers. I did not buy any mock series for the current year as I thought benchmarking my performance with others would put me under pressure which would be detrimental to my score. I prepared on an island for the next 2 months and regained the momentum to bell CAT 19.

CAT 2019:

The chilly November morning made me nostalgic about my previous encounter with CAT. I was fairly relaxed this time and confident of doing well. The paper was exactly what I wanted, a VARC section suited to my strength, moderate LRDI and a doable QA. I sailed through VARC without any hiccups, got the easier LRDI sets in my kitty and successfully dodged the QA section. I came out of the examination hall satisfied and confident of doing well.

Fast forward to the season of IIM calls, I received calls from all the IIMs except Ahmedabad, Calcutta and Indore.

Journey to IIM Kozhikode:

Looking at everyone rushing to the WAT-PI gurus, I decided not to take any formal coaching for it. I was involved in a customer-facing role at my company where I had to pitch my products to them through presentations and also answer their questions impromptu. A year full of client interactions and working with cross-functional teams had given me enough confidence and people skill to sail through the personal interviews.

I read IIM interview experiences on InsideIIM and Quora to understand the kind of questions asked and prepared accordingly. I also did a detailed study of major domestic and international events of the past 6 months.

My WAT topic for IIM Kozhikode was: “Nuclear weapons are the harbinger of global peace”. I managed to write in detail on the topic, thanks to my recently acquired understanding of geopolitics and warfare, filled both sides of the sheet, nearly ran out of space and concluded the WAT.

I was the first candidate in the panel to be interviewed. It was a short stress interview which revolved around my profile. I was asked about the details of my work, COVID and its impact, vaccine development and the panelists asking me to convince them on why nobody should pursue an MBA.

In the hindsight, if I look at what all could have been done better during those two years of preparation then there are multiple things but that is a story for another article.

For now, I’m looking forward to two eventful years at God’s own Kampus.